1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of storing information on optical media, and more particularly to a system and method for recognition of the type of optical media inserted into an optical drive.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As information handling systems have become more common and have improved in the speed at which they process information, increasing amounts of information have been generated for storage. Optical media provide a sensible and relatively inexpensive solution for storing large quantities of information on a portable material. Generally, an optical medium stores information by altering the reflective qualities of a data layer material with a focused laser and allows retrieval of information by reflection of the focused laser against the altered material to measure the reflected light characteristics. However, the precise characteristics of optical media vary widely to accommodate different storage speeds, densities and functions. Optical media materials have developed from supporting relatively simple CD-R discs that write data only once for each area to more complex materials that support rewritable CD-RW discs with repeated writing of data over the same areas of a medium. Storage densities have increased from less than a gigabyte with infrared laser CD formats to several gigabytes with red laser writable and re-writable DVD formats, and even greater densities with planned blue laser media. Optical drives typically manage writes to different types of optical media by reading and applying information embedded on an optical medium, such as information embedded according to PEP standard of ISO/ANSI. Embedded information is generally stored at the inner portion of an optical medium so that an optical disc drive pickup unit finds the embedded information from its “crash stop” position, which is generally the closest possible position of the pickup unit to the center spindle of the optical medium.
One difficulty with the management of different types of optical media is the time that it sometimes takes for an optical drive to identify the type of optical medium that is inserted so that a user can read or write information with the optical medium. Generally, an optical drive recognizes an inserted optical medium by performing a detection algorithm for each type of laser available to the optical medium. For instance, if the optical drive supports DVD and CD formats, the red laser is typically activated first to determine if the inserted optical medium is a DVD and then the infrared laser is typically activated to determine if the inserted optical medium is a CD. However, for each type of optical medium supported by a drive a separate spindle kick is generally needed to turn the medium at an appropriate speed for reading by the drive's pickup. In some instances, several spin speeds are used for each detection algorithm so that processing through each possible type of optical medium tends to be a time consuming process. The amount of time will increase further as optical drives evolve to support other types of media, such as blue laser media, and thus have to run through additional detection algorithms.